USA Today looks at the rising salaries of college basketball coaches, which is now percolating down to schools with smaller athletic budgets. It’s a classic case of keeping up with the Joneses, brought on by an expanding tournament which is the gauge for success.

Football is different.

VCU digging deep to thwart the get-Smart bids by Illinois and N.C. State is emblematic of a widening dollar gap between major-conference schools and so-called midmajors. Football TV contracts and attendance for the six power conferences of football’s Bowl Championship Series mean big money, while competitive ambitions at midmajors often outrun their athletics departments’ ability to pay for them.

3 responses to “One thing that NCAA playoff label brings”

Raising student fees to pay a coach’s salary? What a shitty thing to do. It’s one thing to keep non-revenue sports afloat, but to tax the students in order to raise a coach’s salary from (hypothetical numbers incoming) $500k to $1.2 million? Outrageous!

Football is different? Derek Dooley is making $2 million a year to not coach Tennessee in bowl games. Ole Miss is paying a new head coach $1.5 million before he’s even coached a game in the Southeastern Conference with incentives which can push the deal to $2.5 million.

At least raises based on success in the tournament are based on SOMETHING.

Bloviation for the Dawgnation

Quote Of The Day

“It's definitely different not knowing exactly who it's gonna be, but in a way, I feel like that's good,” he said. “One of my old coaches from Valdosta told me that competition is one of the best coaches. And I feel like, as well as each one of those three guys is performing, they're not gonna do anything but make each other better.” -- Jay Rome, The Red & Black, 3/25/15